Tower Heist Review
By Karen Dahlstrom
Ham on Hi-Rise
In the wake of the financial crisis, fat-cat banking moguls are quickly outpacing terrorists as go-to cinematic villains. The good guys are, of course, the working stiffs; folks whose savings have suddenly disappeared due to money-grubbing financiers. In "Tower Heist", the employees of a luxury residential building plot to steal back their pensions from a Ponzi-scheming billionaire.
Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building manager of The Tower (actually, Trump Tower), a fancy-pants hi-rise overlooking New York's Columbus Circle. Josh's job is to make sure the tenants in the tower are treated with the highest level of attention and deference. He pays special attention to the building's penthouse resident — financial titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda). Shaw's ingratiating "I'm just a guy from Queens" routine works on Josh, who not only plays online chess with him, but entrusts him with the employees' pension fund.
As you can imagine, the pension fund (and a lot of other people's money) has gone
poof. Shaw comes under investigation from the FBI, led by Agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni). The foxy fed takes a shine to Josh and regretfully informs him that even if Shaw does time, they'll probably never get their money back. Understandably, Josh gets a little upset at this news and takes a golf club to Shaw's prized vintage Ferrari, losing his job along with his cool.
Suspecting that Shaw has a stash of money hidden in his apartment, Josh concocts a crazy plan to "storm the castle" and infiltrate The Tower's state-of-the-art security system. Josh enlists a team of former Tower dwellers as part of his "crack" team, less "Ocean's Eleven" than "The Apple Dumpling Gang": Charlie, the concierge and Josh's brother-in-law (Casey Affleck); Mr. Fitzhugh, an evicted Tower tenant/former Merrill Lynch accountant (Matthew Broderick), and Enrique, the elevator operator with an electronics "degree" from DeVry (Michael Peńa). As none of the team has any actual criminal experience, Josh turns to the only crook he knows — a neighborhood street thug named Slide (Eddie Murphy), whose credentials are based on Josh's observation that he's often seen getting cuffed on the hood of a patrol car.
It's when Murphy's character makes an appearance that "Tower Heist" really gets traction. Slide acts as the both the team's criminal drill sergeant and foil, giving the characters something fun to do and to react to. After years of having Murphy mired in pointless, artless "family" films, it is a relief to see him back in hyper, trash-talking form. Remember "Raw"? "48 Hours"? "Trading Places? Murphy's here to remind you of those glorious days when he wasn't just the voice of a talking donkey or making fart noises in a fat suit. He came to play, and boy, does it make a difference. Slide makes the rest of the characters seem more funny and interesting as they play off one another. Hell, even Casey Affleck gets some laughs.
Both Stiller and director Brett Ratner have become more irritating as their careers have ascended, but both are able to put their more annoying quirks aside in favor of making a pretty enjoyable movie. Stiller gives buttoned-up Josh a slight Queens accent and a city swagger, making him seem more at ease and confident than the tightly-wound neurotic he normally plays. When he lets loose on Shaw's Ferrari, it's not a frenetic eruption of nervous energy, it's a calculated kind of street retribution. Therefore, he's more relatable to the audience, who are more than happy to get behind his revenge scheme.
Ratner (bolstered by a sharp script from "
Ocean's Eleven" screenwriter Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson) shows restraint by making only one reference to hookers and one joke about lesbians. The rest of his energy he puts into actually making a fun, fast-moving film. Much of his action expertise shows in the heist sequences, making the best use of the Trump Tower location, set amidst the crowd-choked Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Ratner keeps the action tight and focused, and the audience engaged to the very end. It's a feat which, in and of itself, is a welcome surprise this movie season.
